Living a life of significance

Everybody has a need for significance in their lives, but what does significance mean for you?

All too often in our culture it’s being important, being better than others, it’s competing with others.

We confuse success with significance.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with success – all I’m saying is that it’s not ALL there is.

To give true meaning to our lives, we need to not just fulfil ourselves and our own dreams but we need to connect with other people as well, and to help them in their own lives.

So how can we learn to do this better? 

The key to helping is understanding, the key to understanding is communication, and the key to communication is language.

Learning another language is one of the best ways to improve your understanding of how others think – not just in an intellectual sense but in a deep, emotional, fully experienced sense.  

Learning to see through people’s own lenses, through the language and the culture that they see the world, will not only help you to understand them more fully but will also help you to redefine your own definition of the world. 

And in redefining our vision of the world we learn to think more openly, to make parallels between different concepts, and to listen and understand where others are coming from…  And thus to help both ourselves and them more effectively…

And in this way to live a life that is truly significant.

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